Someone Like Her Read Online Free

Hood Canal or the Strait of Juan de Fuca to the north. It was out in the middle of goddamn nowhere.
    Why, Mom? Why?
    He drove off the ferry at Winslow, on the tip of Bainbridge Island, then followed the two-lane highway that was a near straight-shot the length of the island, across the bridge and past the quaint town of Poulsbo. From then on, civilization pretty much disappeared but for a few gas stations and houses. Traffic was heavy, with this a Friday, so he couldn’t eat up the miles the way he’d have liked to. No chance to pass, no advantage if he’d been able to. He crossed the Hood Canal Bridge, the water glittering in the setting sunlight. Summer homes clung like barnacles along the shore. Then forest closed in, second-growth and empty of any evidence of human habitation.
    Reluctance swelled in him and clotted in his chest. A couple of times he rubbed his breastbone as if he’d relieve heartburn. The light was fading by the time he spotted the sign: Middleton, 5 Miles.
    He was the only one in the line of traffic to make the turn. And why would anyone? Along with distaste for what lay ahead came increasing bafflement at his mother’s choice. How had she even gotten here? Did thetown boast a Greyhound station? Had she gone as far as her money held out? Stabbed her finger at a map? Or had some vagary of fate washed her up here?
    So close to Seattle, and yet she’d never tried to get in touch with him.
    So weirdly far from Seattle in every way that counted.
    The speed limit dropped to thirty-five and he obediently slowed as the highway—if you could dignify it with that name—entered the outskirts. He saw the Safeway store almost immediately, and his foot lifted involuntarily from the gas pedal. Here. She was hit here. Flung to one of these narrow paved shoulders. With dark encroaching, he couldn’t see where, or if any evidence remained.
    Ahead, he saw the blue hospital sign, but some impulse made him turn the other direction, toward downtown. The Burger King on the left seemed the only outpost of the modern world. Otherwise, the town he saw under streetlights probably hadn’t changed since the 1950s. There was an old-fashioned department store, churches—he saw three church spires without looking hard—pharmacy, hardware store. Some of the buildings had false fronts. All of the town’s meager commerce seemed to lie along the one main street, except for the Safeway.
    A memory stirred in his head. Wasn’t there a Middleton in Nova Scotia? Or a Middleburg, or Middle- something? Had this town sounded like home to his mother? Had she stayed, then, because it felt like home, or because people here were good to her? Lucy Peterson had expressed guilt that they hadn’t done more, but she’d obviously cared.
    More than Elizabeth Rutledge’s own family had.
    His jaw muscles spasmed. If this woman was his mother, he’d have to tell his grandmother, who was frail but at eighty-two was still living in her house in the town of Brookfield in Nova Scotia. Would she be glad? Or grieve terribly to know what her daughter’s life had been like?
    He ran out of excuses not to go to the hospital after a half-dozen city blocks. There wasn’t much to this town.
    The hospital was about what he’d expected: two-story in the central block, with wings to each side. He parked and walked in the front entrance. The white-haired woman behind the desk looked puzzled when he asked for Elizabeth Rutledge. Then her face abruptly cleared.
    “Oh! The hat lady! That’s what Lucy said her name is. You must be the son.” She scrutinized him with interest and finally disappointment. “You don’t look like her, do you?”
    With thinning patience, he repeated, “Her room number?”
    She beamed, oblivious to his strained civility. “Two sixty-eight.” She waved. “Just go right up the elevators there and then turn to your left.”
    Despite a headache, he forced himself to nod. “Thank you.”
    The elevator door opened as soon as he